Authors: Essie Summers
“Haast gets raw milk from a local farmer, it comes to the M.O.W. canteen per the school bus—on school days. No milk Saturdays and Sundays he delivers it to the door. It’s practically non-existent during school holidays. But at Kairuri-mata you have to rely on dried milk and tinned. You get used to it. We get plenty of fish, venison, crayfish, lobsters or whatever you prefer to call ’em.”
“What about fruit and vegetables?”
“A local man comes round Sundays. He gets his produce from Dunedin, but most of the permanent houses grow a few vegetables. I’m hoping ours has been recently occupied. The line was bad when I was speaking to them from Dunedin and I didn’t make out the details or which one it was. Housekeeping isn’t the easiest, Kirsty, when you’ve been used to a city, especially one like Sydney with such supplies, but we’ll make out. Anything else?”
“Not another question, but I do have a request, Simon.” She felt her cheeks warming.
“Yes?”
“Would you be able to lend me a pair of pyjamas? I’ve got such ridiculously flimsy nightgowns with me, and if I have to attend to the children through the night I—”
Of course. Only trousseau nightgowns. She knew he would be thinking that.
“Sure. I’ll fish a pair out. Warmer too, a night like this. We’ll hit the hay now, I think. Do you notice the rain’s easing off? It will be light early, so after breakfast we’ll push on and be able to reach Kairuri-mata and have most of the day to settle ourselves. I suppose we’d better get Becky and Mark up before we turn in?”
Kirsty was grateful for his casualness. They might have been parents of long standing.
She was so tired she thought she’d drop asleep immediately. But as soon as she got comfortable her mind became completely active. Till now there had been so much to do, to decide, to condition oneself to, that the present with its multitude of duties for the children had become the real world, and everything that had happened to her before had receded.
But now the past and the ruins of her future thrust starkly into her mind. Remnants of her first, bewildered inability to believe it was happening to her, this destruction of her happiness, niggled at her. The whole thing was so unsatisfactory, the flight with nothing talked out, explained, excused. She knew now that Gilbert’s wife had not served her well in suggesting she run away.
Excused?
But nothing could excuse bigamy.
She supposed dimly that some day this might not hurt so much. She remembered Matron, surprised in tears on the anniversary of a battle engagement in the Islands of the Pacific, saying, as she remembered her young husband, fallen in the fighting, “But things pass, Kirsty. It’s only occasionally now that the sense of utter loss possesses me. Life goes on.”
But even Matron had not known disillusionment. Wasn’t that what they found in orphanage work ... that the ones who had lost their parents by death rehabilitated themselves more easily than those from broken homes?
Yet Kirsty lay for a full hour before the first stifled sob escaped her. There had never been time to cry, except that one night in the Christchurch hotel when the tears would not come.
She was appalled to find that once started she could not stop. She turned into her pillows, trying to muffle the sound.
She heard Simon, in the other lower bunk on the far side of the hut, stir, get out. He came across to her, knelt down by the bunk, put his hand on the back of her head. He smoothed her head for several seconds, as if she had been Rebecca.
He said very softly, “Let it rip, girl. You’ve bottled it up too long. Didn’t Shakespeare say: “Give sorrow words’?” Her mind finished the quotation: “The grief that will not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”
But it wasn’t the heartbreak Simon thought it. It was a heart trampled upon, bruised. She was lost, not knowing what to do, misunderstood by all Australia and New Zealand, if not the whole world.
Simon’s voice against her ear said, “I’d like to help. But if this .. his hand paused in its stroking ... “is only making it worse, tell me, and I’ll go away.”
He was afraid his touch would make her yearn for another dearly remembered touch! The tears dried up. She must not take too much sympathy. The more that was given, the more to curdle when the truth was known. She blew her nose, wiped her eyes, put out her hand, squeezed his, said, “Thanks, Simon. No, it made it better. Sorry I woke you. I’ll be all right now.”
“Oh, I hadn’t gone to sleep. I had one or two problems of my own teasing my mind. But nothing like yours. Do you want to talk it out, Kirsty? You’ve no one of your own. I may not be kin, but perhaps I could be kith! We are going to be just that, aren’t we? Friends?”
“Yes, we are going to be friends. I do admire the way you accepted the responsibility of the children. Most would have made the remoteness of your job, plus the fact of being single, the excuse for not being able to take it on. We must work together for the children’s happiness. But I’d rather not talk about it, thanks. I’m out to make a new life, not long for the old.”
It was no time to be talking at length, anyway. But as soon as possible, perhaps it would be best to tell him.
Better than being found out. And she’d rather be Kirsty Macpherson than Mrs. Brown.
She said, “Simon, tell me truly, is your problem anything to do with taking me to camp?”
“No, I was just mulling over the job. I’d not intended getting back so soon—so I was wondering what time I’d get for making out my reports—a colossal job. We don’t work a forty-hour week at Haast, we work six days, not five, and nine hours per day plus plenty of overtime when needed, on administration work. They’re a good bunch at the camp. Any gossip is fairly good-natured. I think they’ll appreciate the hole I was in, and while perhaps a less attractive housekeeper might have been safer still, it’s not as if you were a single woman. They’ll look on you as a widow, bereaved tragically young, and doing a good service in looking after three strange children. I imagine they’ll simply hope it will take your mind off things. I’d never have considered taking a single girl, of course.”
So that was that. If she was to look after the children, she must, to all intents and purposes, remain a widow.
She said crisply: “Well, I’ll sleep now. Don’t dread frequent outbursts like this. It would be too wearing. Once I’m at the camp and settled, I’ll be all right.”
He patted her head and left her. Kirsty dropped into an exhausted sleep. But not a dreamless one.
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN she woke, for a few magic moments before she opened her lids, she thought she was in heaven. Never had she heard such a choir of birdsong. No hope of distinguishing any particular bird, the blended chorus rose above the silver sound of laughing waters, in a song of praise that made Kirsten feel this must be Eden and the world young again.
Even through her lids she knew the sun was shining. She opened her eyes to see the sun streaming through the cobwebby panes of the one small window and spilling in a golden pool on the rough wooden floor.
“Good morning,” said Simon’s voice, and she turned her head to see him up and dressed, with a bucket of spring water in his hand. “The children have been so good. Mark’s just stirring, the other two are reading in their bunks, dying for you to wake up.”
He turned to lift Mark. Kirsty sprang out of bed, swirled her turquoise quilted dressing-gown about her.
Rebecca leaned out of the top bunk, cupped her hands about her mouth, whispered in Kirsty’s ear, “I’m dry again,” and her eyes were shining triumphantly.
“I knew you would be,” returned Kirsty lightly, in answering whisper. “It’s like that. You suddenly pass a milestone. Down you come, poppet.”
When they were all dressed Simon took the children outside and Kirsty got into a gingham dress, the plainest of all her trousseau dresses and even then not plain enough to satisfy her. No doubt jeans and a cotton top would have been better for travelling in, but they made her look about sixteen. She slipped a black Alice-band over her hair to keep it confined and neat-looking, and used make-up extremely sparingly. She wanted no raised eyebrows, for Simon’s sake.
It was great fun cooking their breakfast, tidying up the hut, replacing some of the provisions they used with tinned stuff from their own store, packing the blankets that belonged to the hut in the big chests that kept them reasonably dry and clean.
Simon and Geordie brought in enough wood to replace what they had used. It was soaking wet, of course, but would dry out. They reset the fire with what dry stuff remained.
They had to mop the front floor of the car, but the seat was not wet thanks to the ground sheet.
“One thing, although we’ll create a draught as we move, it is fairly warm this morning, and will get warmer. It won’t be pleasant riding without a windscreen, but at least we’ll be dry.”
They set off. The water-courses were still fairly turbulent but had passed their peaks during the night. They negotiated them with care. They all put on windbreakers to protect themselves, but it was endurable.
Suddenly the river gorges gave way to river flats once they had crossed over the mighty Gates of Haast bridge. The road and the landscape widened, though still sweeping round great bluffs. They came to a garage, passed under the great Welcome to Westland sign and crossed the border. At the end of the road they could glimpse sand-dunes and smell the sea.
“Ah,” said Simon, inhaling, “I can’t bear to be inland. I always like to be within sight and sound of the sea. Even the lakes don’t quite make up for it.”
Suddenly, it seemed, they were in Haast township, a one-road settlement, with neat, plain houses each side of the road.
They had a great welcome at the Ministry of Works. Morning tea was rushed on, the windscreen exclaimed over, Kirsty and the children found themselves the centre of a laughing, friendly group, and began to feel at home.
“Well,” said one girl, a toddler at her skirts, a babe in arms, “at least we didn’t expect Simon to come back with a ready-made family. I do thing you’re a brick to take on three strange children. Are you used to children?”
Kirsty laughed. “Yes, I was a cottage mother in an orphanage. I’m used to them by the dozen.”
“I wish you weren’t going to Kairuri-mata. This is a mite more civilized. Tell you what, we’ll all come to see you some time. We can now the bridge is finished. We’ll make a picnic of it, bringing our own eats. We don’t want you feeling lonely.”
When Simon emerged from the office, Kirsty felt she was already surrounded by friends, which gave her a warm feeling except for her occasional pang of conscience.
They piled up the wagon with stuff that would help Kirsty out for the first day or two till she was used to the stove, and off they set, Kirsty felt it would be heaven now to be done with travelling. She felt like the Ancient Mariner. Home, however humble, would be all she asked. A terminus.
They turned north across the magnificent Haast bridge, glimpsed the sea on their left. It was such a narrow coastline, this, hemmed in with bush and mountains and leagues of what was practically unexplored country, vast and impregnable in places. How strange to think that somewhere in there, surveyors were busy, discovering valleys and geographical features only faintly guessed at till now, mapping, plotting, forerunners of civilization. She had a pang for the wilderness, wildly beautiful, yielding up its last secrets. Would it ever become too accessible, too civilized, or would they always preserve its beauty for worshippers from all over the earth?
“All this and no snakes!” she replied. “Too wonderful to be true. An Eden without a serpent.”
“Not quite,” said Simon. “Wait till the sandflies come out to sample your blood! You might long for a snake then, they are at least few and far between. The sandflies are always with us—except in extreme heat, high wind, or heavy rain. They’re worst in the evening. When the sandflies go to sleep the mosquitoes wake up, but at least they can be controlled to a certain degree with nets and screens. We’ll have to use repellent on the children when they’re bad, they love new blood. Wasn’t it Captain Cook’s men who said the sandflies on this coast were the biggest and most bloodthirsty in the world? See that hill ... it’s called Mosquito Hill!”
They turned up into a valley, back into the hills, away from that sparkling blue Tasman Sea, where, four hours’ flying distance away, events could be shaping that would justify Kirsten’s flight.
They were home ... it seemed strange in this region of wild bush blown back into fantastic shapes by the sea-winds, to turn a corner and see against a background of primeval forest the sophistication of children’s swings and see-saws and smell the purely domestic odors of good roast beef from the cookhouse.
Here again they were surrounded, but by not more than half a dozen women, all of them young, till from the cookhouse emerged a spare yet motherly figure, in a big lavender checked apron.
Her hair was twisted into a knot at the back of her head, the crowsfeet of laughter had etched deep lines about her eyes,, she held out both hands to Simon, who bent and kissed her.
“Ah, Jimsy, how good to see you. Meet my newly acquired family ... Mrs. Brown from Australia, Becky, Geordie, Mark.”
Mrs. Jimson’s shrewd grey eyes swept upwards, scanned Kirsty’s face, then her eyes widened a little, for a moment in which Kirsty held her breath. Had she seen a likeness to a newspaper photograph? Or if she had, would she give credence—and voice—to so wild a surmise?
She didn’t need to wonder long. Jimsy said, “Well, you gave me quite a turn ... it was like turning the clock back, you’re so like a neighbor of twenty-five years ago. Most people your coloring have blue eyes. This woman had light brown ones like yours. But I’m nattering. We’ve got the place ready as far as possible with the stuff that came through on the truck yesterday. We added a few bits and pieces that were to spare. If you want us to help we will—if you’d rather get on yourselves, We’ll get on with our business. But you needn’t worry about dinner today. We’ll send you over enough from the single men’s. It will give you a start.”
Her voice, a warm Yorkshire one, most attractive, had for a second sent a pang through Kirsty. It reminded her of Miriam Brownfield’s.
Although the house was of three huts put together it had been that way long enough to look harmonious. There were marigolds and catmint growing against the walls, filling up the spaces where it rested on piles. There was a good shingle path and a square of it at the back door so I the mud wouldn’t tramp in. There was a circular clothesline, a vegetable patch and best of all, a few trees had been left when the bush had been cleared.
They stepped in. There was lino on the floors, gingham and chintz curtains at the small windows, a cottagey air about the whole place, clean and scrubbed and smelling of beeswax. The stove was on, but not too fiercely, and an old-fashioned rug made of rags lay in front of it.
“I like rag rugs,” said Geordie. “I like to squirm my bare toes in them.”
There was a kitchen table and chairs, just the bare number, and on the table a basket of fresh scones covered with a tea-towel, a magnificent sponge with what would be mock cream filling and some apples and tomatoes. Kirsty liked the bush fern set in a little pot on the windowsill and in the sitting-room a small jar of pansies. In this room they had put down the scatter-rugs she’d taken from Nan’s and someone had contributed two deep rattan chairs, extremely aged. From the single men’s quarters, she guessed.
Mrs. Jimson said: “You can alter the rooms round to suit yourselves, of course. I put one bed and the cot in this room—I thought it might do the boys, and this room has a very tiny porch off it. I thought it might do you, Mrs. Brown, with the porch for the wee girl. And the man who brought the stuff up said he thought Simon would be using the office, so we put a stretcher in there. You’ll have to build something for your clothes, Simon lad, it’s not exactly the Dorchester. All it sports is a built-in desk and three hooks behind the door!”
Kirsty said, “I think the arrangements are fine. It has a diminutive charm all its own. What fun it will be to furnish. I’ve always wanted to set up home.”
Jimsy said: “But haven’t you—” and bit it off.
Kirsty felt the color flood her face and said quickly, turning away from their regard, “We—we didn’t get as far as that.” And Simon added jerkily, “Mrs. Brown was widowed very soon after she was married, Jimsy.”
Kirsty knew they thought she had turned away to hide tears, and hated herself. She had a flashback in memory to one of the orphanage chaplains saying: “A lie has no legs, it always needs another lie to prop it up.”
She had been so open all her life she spoke without thought of the consequences. She realized suddenly that people who had guilty pasts, something to hide, lived a ghastly life, always on the alert for the indiscreet word of self-betrayal. Much of this and she’d feel like a criminal fleeing from justice.
Meantime she owed it to these fine people not to embarrass them. She turned back, said, “Please don’t feel bad about things like that—I’m getting over it.”
Then she hated herself still more for the admiration she saw in their eyes.
Simon said, “It smelt like a hot dinner ... why not a lunch, Jimsy?”
“The men are working near and going away out after lunch. The rain caused a washout a mile away, so I thought for once I’d get the dinner out of the way in the morning. I’m making new curtains for the dining-room this afternoon. The boys have been painting it in their time off.”
Simon grinned. “Keeping them off the weekend booze?”
She grinned back. “That’s it.” She turned to Kirsty. “Not that they are ever objectionable with it, but there’s so little to do. If you come over sharp at twelve, Simon lad, I’ll ladle you out something of everything. Now I’ll be away. You’ll have Lexie coming in. Oh, here she is now.” Lexie Malloch had a small boy with her, about Mark’s age, small Chris was dark where Mark was fair.
Simon kissed her cheek lightly.
“Mac’s thrilled you’re back, Simon. He’s dying to hear all about your experiences. He nearly died when he knew you were arriving with a family, thinks it a grand idea. Not enough married men in this camp, he says. How clever of you to bring a
young
housekeeper. I’ve been longing for someone my own age—or younger—besides which, he’ll be spending a bit of time on his own shortly, as you’ll notice—” she looked down on her artist’s smock and flowing figure—“and he finds you more of a kindred spirit than the rest. Mrs. Brown, do we have to be formal? Could we skip the prelims and make it Lexie and ... ?”
“Kirsty, I’m all in favor of that.”
Lexie said, “Now I’m not going to stay, dinner will be over in a moment, and when you’ve had it you’ll want to get the toddler down for a nap, I suppose, and get on with the unpacking. If you want anything, hammers and tacks and things, just run over and get them and I won’t hold you up.”
“Before you go,” said Kirsty, glancing doubtfully at the stove, “would you like to tell me how that thing works? It’s a complete mystery to me.”
“Yes. They were to me when I was first married. I wasn’t used to anything but gas or electric. I was terrified of the first one I used. It was a fool of a stove. It sulked when it was raining and when we had high hot winds it roared like a furnace. But this one isn’t bad, though all fuel stoves are temperamental. Cleaning the flues is a foul job, but this kind only need it once in six weeks or so. I’ll give you a hand the first time.”
“Oh, that can be my job,” said Simon.
Lexie looked doubtful. “That’s what Mac said. I let him—twice. He made a wonderful job of the flues but attacks things so vigorously it took me all day to clean up after him. I do it without disturbing the soot too much. But you
might
be more restrained than Mac.”
Simon laughed. “Your tone doesn’t display any faith in me!”
“No, you’re Mac’s type. All or nothing. Though perhaps you’re becoming more discreet, more toned down.”
“How come?” he demanded.
She pulled a face. “You lost me a bet. With Mac.”
“What on?”
“Your chances of coming back married. I’d always said to Mac you were the type to not bother with girls till you met the right one, then you’d fall hook, line and sinker. I had an idea you might bring back a Canadian bride. You’d make up your mind and marry a girl out of hand. No prolonged courtship.”